Setting up Bell Home Hub 3000 Ubiquiti EdgeRouter and UniFi.

By | October 12, 2020

Updated 10/11/2020.

I switched to Bell Fibe services after many years with Rogers. In my experience, the Rogers Ignite service worked well but the performance of the TV service with NextBox 3.0 was just awful. The many problems with this service are well documented and I won’t get into it here. However, being a techie at heart, I wanted to enjoy modern home entertainment technology and Bell seems to be the current leader here in Ontario, Canada. First off, no more physical cable running throughout my house. The Bell television receivers all connect via a dedicated and hidden wifi band. Ethernet is also available. This means that I can conveniently move my receivers and televisions around the house without any hassle. Depending on your perspective, the only downside to the Bell service is that the Home Hub 3000 is required to manage delivery of all services: Television, Internet and phone. Of course, there are ways to eliminate use of the HH3000 but there was no compelling benefit for my use case.

I have Bell Fibe 500Mbps service with fiber to my home (FTTH) to the HH3000. I measured a sustained 450 – 550Mbps download speeds and low ping times with a laptop connected directed to the HH3000. Sweet. Do I really need that speed? Probably not. Netflix only requires 5Mbps per HD stream. My home network setup is centered around Ubiquiti EdgeRouter X for routing and security and Ubiquiti UniFi for wifi services.

The first thing that you want to do is set an administrator password on the Home Hub 3000. The second thing is to disable wifi (the wifi performance is awful). I should point out that the HH3000 maintains a ‘hidden’ wifi network for the TV service which cannot (and should not) be disabled. The  HH3000 does not support a bridged mode. It does support the idea of a DMZ but I was unable to get that to work reliably. Rather, my EdgeRouter authenticates to the HH3000 via PPPoE passthrough using my b1 username and password. The HH3000 sits outside of my LAN and has no visibility into my home networks.

If your wifi router does not have the capability to initiate a PPPoE connection then you can enable advanced DMZ by navigating to the advanced configuration menu. According to the Bell service manual provided to their installation technicians, the Advanced DMZ feature available on Bell Aliant Actiontec routers provides an alternative to RFC 1483 Bridge Mode deployment. This feature delivers the functionality which is usually sought after in a Bridge Mode configuration while maintaining compatibility with service offerings and support capabilities. Enabling advanced DMZ on the HH3000 allows the router to obtain the HH3000’s WAN IP address and receive every packet received on the router’s WAN interface (just like being in bridge mode). Packets to and from the router in the Advanced DMZ won’t need to be modified as they traverse the firewall since they were constructed using the WAN IP address to begin with. This configuration is the method preferred by Bell since it allows Bell to maintain absolute management of the HH3000. However, as mentioned above, I was unable to get this configuration to work reliably.

There are other configurations that I have seen where the HH3000 can be eliminated entirely. However, for my purposes, the benefits were not worth the extra effort. My security and performance objectives have been met with this configuration. As far as performance goes, I can say that the Bell Fibe service is solid. Low latency and consistent throughput.

54 thoughts on “Setting up Bell Home Hub 3000 Ubiquiti EdgeRouter and UniFi.

  1. Ted

    This is pretty impressive. I so far havent found anyone else with an HH3000 able achieve the bridge type of setup while maintaining service and firewall with their existing TV.

    The best I got from bell was the “helpful” suggestion to buy a static IP from their business department by cancelling my residential service, starting a new contract (3 years) with business which would omit the ability to have 4k.

    As they said “do you want 4k or the static IP”…

    Reply
  2. Isaac

    Hello, thanks for the article. What is considered a bridged mode? I am running edgerouter behind hh3000. Pppoe connection works and i am able to get it connected. Am I alone in this? All the forum and articles I see says pppoe path thru does not work with hh3000 fiber internet…but how come mine works? Can you explain this phenomenon?

    Reply
  3. Bob

    Hi, This is really good information. I just switched to the HH3000 and was surprised by it’s lack of configurability. I was hoping to run my network behind a Cisco ASA firewall but couldn’t find a way to insert it in the network behind the HH3000 without creating a double NAT. Your config just might work for this. I too run my own Wireless network but found that the HH3000 will not do DHCP relay for the wireless clients. This forced me to create a small DHCP scope on the Wi-Fi controller just for the wireless clients. The most puzzling issue is that after I turned off all the wireless in the HH3000, it still broadcasts a hidden Wi-Fi network in 5GHz. I don’t want this causing interference with my Wi-Fi network, so if anyone can offer a solution it would be greatly appreciated.

    Reply
    1. Nigel Post author

      As far as I know, there isn’t a way to turn of that wifi network. You probably don’t want to turn it off anyway as it is required for the vlan that supports Fibe TV. I believe that those packets are tagged with vlan id 35. I have Fibe TV service active with my setup and there is no problem with interference between the HH3000 and my wifi router.

      Reply
      1. Martin

        Would you have a complete step by step on how you were able to set up your own router and keep your Bell fibe TV? thx in advance

        Reply
    2. Ben

      Hi Bob,

      You Say that “DHCP relay for the wireless clients”. Does this mean that if I have a router acting as an access point that the devices connect to its WIFI will have DHCP issues? I ask because I feel that as I move around my house and the WIFI moves from the HH3000 to the access point the WIFI is not always available.

      Reply
  4. Jay

    Wow great info thx. I’m a new Bell3000 + Fibe TV subscriber.
    I want to use my D-Link DIR-819 AC750 Dual Band router.
    I’ll try this. Thx 🙂

    Reply
  5. Phil

    This worked for me! Thanks for the post.

    I was getting a poor signal on the top floor with the HH3000 and I had a switch on the top floor. I plugged my ASUS AS87U router into the switch using the WAN port of the router. I went into the DMZ setting on the HH3000 and selected the device (ASUS router). Worked! Simple as that!

    The alternate option was to get Bells WiFi pods (which are full mesh and I think would work well) but I had the ASUS router and it’s a good one so I tried your approach.

    Reply
    1. Patrick

      Hey Phil i see at the bottom of the article it says this no longer works but your reply is very recent your saying you got this to work for you just fine? i ask because i will be getting the home hub next month and would really love to use my own router with custom firmware.

      Reply
      1. Phil

        It still works for me. I’m not sure why others are not. Nigel seems to have figured it out. To recap: I went into Advanced Settings>Networking>DMZ, found my ASUS router (it is connected to my WAN port on the ASUS) that was plugged into the HH 3000 and checked off the box at the bottom that had the following text.
        “The advanced DMZ feature allows a device to use the modem’s WAN IP address as its own. It also puts the device outside the modem’s firewall.”

        Reply
        1. JackB

          Hi Phil,
          I just want to confirm the port connections.
          From your switch, you are connecting to your WAN port on your Asus. On the HH3000, the other end is connected to WAN port there or a LAN port?

          I want to use the Linksys AC1900 router as my secondary

          Reply
          1. Phil Mostert

            Yes, on the HH3000 side you plug your CAT5/6 cable into the LAN port and at the other end you connect to the WAN port on your router.

    2. Steve

      Wanted to leave a reply.

      I have gotten this to work with Homehub 3000 and TP-Link AC1900. I am also on Bell Aliant.

      I plugged the AC1900 from LAN1 on Homehub to “Internet” on AC1900 (which is the WAN).

      Logged into the Homehub Router and added the device found in Advanced Settings>Networking>DMZ (including checking Advance at the bottom). Save the settings and allow to save.

      It may take a couple minutes to make all the connections but it works.

      Wanted to pay it forward as this post helped me and wanted to confirm it still works.

      Reply
      1. Jason

        Hello , sorry to bother u! I read that u are using a Netgear AC1900 instead of the HH300 for wifi? I also want to do that as I’m hoping the netgear will provide better wifi reception!

        Just looking for some advice on how to shut down the wifi on the hh3000 and use the netgear for wifi?

        Thx in advance

        Reply
  6. Patrice Samson

    Hi All,
    I am hoping someone can help me.
    I have a similar setup.
    HH3000 to eth0 on edgerouter lite.
    eth1 to netgear unmanaged switch for home LAN.
    After 15 minutes of being connected, the HH3000 crashes and need to be rebooted.
    The installer even installed a second HH3000 without success.
    I have my own wi-fi using Ubiquiti access points so I have disabled the BELL wi-fi network.
    I have my edgerouter set for DMZ in the HH3000.

    If I simply by pass my Edgerouter and feed the HH3000 directly to my netgear switch, all works fine.

    Im guessing its an issue with my configuration in my Edgerouter but I cant seem to figure it out.
    I can post my config if needed.
    Hoping someone has an idea as I have been working on this for a week.
    Thanks all

    Reply
  7. Patrick

    Nigel,

    Do you have any other way of doing this as it is important for my work and have no choice but to get the home hub 3000. does anyone know if this is working again or have a workaround to use your own router?

    Reply
    1. Nigel Post author

      This all started with an update that was pushed by Bell a few weeks ago. Maybe this is happening in my area only. The configuration still works except for the advanced DMZ function. The only difference is that the router that you want to use will receive a 192.168.2.x IP address instead of the actual WAN address. In effect, this is a double NAT situation where both the HH3000 and your router will be performing NAT. It works fine in my setup and performance is not affected. The only downside is that port forwarding from the Internet to hosts on your LAN will be complicated (but not impossible).

      Reply
      1. Patrick

        Alright somewhat good news basically in the house there will be a lot of gaming consoles an to be able for all to have open nat i need to use my own router with custom firmware it works great with the old bell R3000 but in the new house they told me i will be getting this home hub 3000 so im not sure if this whole double nat situation will cause problems with open nat on the gaming consoles 🙁 i wonder if they will ever push and update to revert this probably not enough of us out there to get our voice out.

        Reply
        1. Pldelisle

          Same problem here.
          I’m with Virgin (which is Bell in Montreal north shore), and they gave me this piece of crap of Home Hub 3000.
          I have my own Cisco 2821 enterprise, Cisco 2960-S 24-port gigabit switch with L3 VLAN static routing.
          I wanted to activate the advanced DMZ. Tested it with a Bell HH3000 two weeks ago at my parent’s house. Worked well.
          Got my new house and a newer version of the HH3000. I had to activate the advanced DMZ but never got a public IP on the WAN link of my 2821.
          I had to double nat but this is causing problems.

          Reply
          1. Nigel Post author

            I haven’t tried this personally but I have heard that PPPoE pass through seems to work in some areas. That’s the thing with Bell…the services are not consistent in all locations.

          2. edidas

            did you use your pppoe authentication directly?

          3. Nigel Post author

            Just remember that you will need to keep the HH3000 if you have Bell TV or phone service.

  8. Gavin

    Hi!

    This works well for me with the HH3000 advanced DMZ through to my Asus RC55U router that I’m using as my DHCP

    But, the next challenge for me now is that I can no longer use a Plex media server run off of one the machines on my local network. Nothing else on my local network can see the server at all. (Although all casting / mirroring with youtube, spotify, etc work fine)

    Secondly, if I try to apply my VPN on the Asus router, I also lose complete connectivity to the outside.

    Does anyone know a way around this?

    Reply
  9. Daniel

    I have an Asus RT-AC3100 connected to the HH3000 in advanced DMZ. It is working but, i noticed the connection from the HH3000 to the Asus router’s WAN port is only 100Mbs. Does anyone know why it doesn’t connect at 1000Mbs? Thanks.

    Reply
    1. Nigel Post author

      The ports on the HH3000 are gigabit ports. If you are getting <100Mbps then there's a problem with the ethernet cable, or the switch in between the connection or maybe the pro configuration on the RT-AC3100.

      Reply
  10. iain

    Thanks everyone, there are good comments on this thread.

    I am a new Bell subscriber in a brand-new subdivision and as you know Big Red and Big Blue do not allow the little guys to piggyback on their fiber networks yet so I had to drop the awesome guys that start.ca.
    The value of Bell over Rogers seemed to to be best so I selected them.
    I had a robust network simply using a AC Airport Extreme with a couple of airport expresses in my old house. Everything was wireless.
    New house is been prewired with cat gigabit into almost every room:-) so the plan was to simply disable the Wi-Fi on the 3000, add my Apple APX with a 16 port gigabit switch. I have not had time to terminate all of the ethernet rough ins, for the cable drops but Bell had thrown in the Bell ‘Pods’ pods for free.
    Long story short, they’re absolute garbage… the worst mesh network I’ve ever experienced.
    With the home pods disabled and my MacBook Air wirelessly connected to the home hub, I was speed testing at over 300 Mb per second as per my plan.
    As soon as I enable the mesh network, and add a single Home pod, let alone all of them,the performance drops to anywhere between 10 Mb per second to maybe 70 in certain rooms.
    Cant wait to finish the hardwiring…

    Reply
    1. Nigel Post author

      The advantage with the Bell FTTH Internet service is the speed and low latency. However, the HH3000 is an awful pieced of hardware. With a quick Google search you will find configurations where some folks eliminated the HH3000 entirely and connected the fiber directly to a SFP port on a suitable switch. Your b1 username/password from Bell will work with authentication pass-through. With this configuration then you will be able to use your own wifi hardware (which I am sure is better than the HH3000 hardware). In my case, I basically use the HH3000 to terminate the fiber. I connect to my gigabit switch via ethernet and then to my UniFi wifi hardware. Although the wifi on my HH3000 is disabled I need it for the Bell TV service.

      Reply
  11. stark

    hello everyone
    I have a bell home hub 3000, what I wanted to do was like set up a dns using no-ip and then use port fordwarding like from the router I tried to port forward to my kali linux at the port 4444 but whenever I tried to ping the public ip address or the dns which I set up using no-ip am not able to ping, I tried to go through DMZ in the router and also enabled the advanced feature everything failed so could any one help me or guide me how to make this successful.

    Reply
  12. Leo

    Has anyone been able to do this with the Hub3000 and Google WiFi? Something happened recently and the Google WiFi speed has become slower than a snail. I have 300MB up/down and the Google wifi sends only 50Mb at best. I’ve tried the DMZ, contacted Google supported and they blamed Bell of course saying that the modem needs to have bridge enabled.

    I’m thinking to sell the Google WiFis and just get the Bell extenders. I guess that is what they want.

    Reply
  13. dave

    Hey Leo, had the same problem and had to factory reset my google wifi.

    The speed came back but I am still struggling with double NAT issues and port forwarding.

    Reply
  14. Martin

    I just got the Bell 1 gigabit service installed yesterday, and of course it comes with the home hub 3000. Using an ethernet cable (Cat6) from the home hub to my computer I can only get 400mbs when testing with speednet or the google speed site. But the home hub speed test utility (if you login into the modem u can use the utility) shows that it gets 1 gigabit download, any opinions pls?

    Reply
  15. bober101

    ok so i jsut got my Asus ac3100 hooked up on the hub3000 .

    you need to get hold of your b1 username and password.

    after just reset the hub to factory settings (not reset) hold brightness and reset button for a good 20 seconds.
    LAN 1 from the 3000 hub hooked up to Wan on the asus. just setup the PPPOE on the router and input the b1 and password. I have fibe TV and was about tot setup IP tv vlan in the asus router but if you plug the TV box directly into the hub3000 you dont need to do anything! its weird but it works. plus i had alot of issues with the TV box being on the wifi anyways. Anyways i logged in back to the bell hub and turned off wps and wifi since my asus router is the main router now and there is quite alot of SSIDs generating bad QOS for my devices.
    one thing that you can disable is the hidden 5ghz on the bell hub. it is acutaly the fall back wifi for the bell IPtv.

    Reply
  16. Fred St-Pierre

    If you guys wanna bypass the HH3000 entirely, just get an SFP to RJ45 media converter. They go for 35$ off amazon… 10gtek or TP-Link sell some. For internet service, configure VLAN 35 for tagging, set your WAN access to PPPoE, enter your credentials and you’re in business. If you have IPTV though, it’s a lot more messing around, as you need to not only configure VLAN 36, but you need to make sure it’s able to assign itself an IP and renew the default gateway so your route is still valid. I personally did it with Unifi equipment (Switch + USG + Wifi access points) and it works fine. The only thing I could not get to work was the phone service, but that doesn’t really bother me.

    Reply
    1. David Wilkes

      Hi Fred! How did you make this work?

      Was the router plugged into the IPTV receiver? Or wireless?

      I am testing out the Linksys Velop mesh, and doesn’t seem to have the same capability to setup VLANs.

      Reply
  17. Jackie

    I wish I understood all of this. I’m ok for basic understanding but once you all start saying setup ppoe or talk of switches I’m lost. Anyone have a YouTube walkthrough? LoL.
    I have the HH3000 placed in my condo closet by no choice of mine. I subscribe to 300mps service which came with free Alt TV. I stream a lot on my TV Netflix app and use a Nvidia shield for entertainment. Speed tests on my shield come in at 40mps on average. I have the pods for a mesh network and have an ethernet cable from Shield to pod but not much better. On occasion speed tests have come in at 125mps or so but that is rare. I read about changing DNS on shield to increase speeds but internet was inaccessible. A call into Bell & was told cannot change DNS and definitely not change DHCP to Static. I also can’t change channels and they set up both 2.4 and 5mhz as one (No idea how to change that either). When I called in for help on where to change channels I was told by Bell not to disable WPS (?) if I’m using the pods and therefore changing channels is not an option. So here I am paying for 300mps and stuck with 2.4 & 5mhz on one so the hub can smartly decide which to use for which device (and how much speed my device requires), stuck on the channel Bell decides, and using the DNS of Bell’s choice. I have an RT-AC1200 from past year when I lived in apartment complex and was able to bridge that Bell router to optimize 50mps I paid for at the time. Crazy I had better wifi speeds with 50mps than 300mps services! I would absolutely love to change my setup to optimize speed but I don’t really understand all the networking lingo and lack comfort in what I’m doing. I don’t want to completely mess things up and have no internet. Would anyone be willing to explain the steps for connectimg your own router, changing DNS dummies like me?

    Reply
  18. Horia Georgescu

    @Fred St-Pierre
    Hi, any chance you can share your configuration details?
    Thank you

    Reply
  19. Alan W McKay

    Using “Advanced DMZ Mode” did it for me – was pretty trivial to do. My Ubiquiti firewall just figured it out and did not require anything to be changed.

    Reply
  20. Pierre

    Very useful post! “Advanced DMZ mode” seems to work. My router is assigned a public IP address. However none of the computers connecting to it can reach past the local network. Is there any additional step I might have forgot about? How did you configure the WAN interface?

    Thanks!

    Reply
    1. Nigel Post author

      You should not need any special configuration for your WAN interface. However, during my own testing, I did notice that packets would not be routed across the DMZ. I never did a packet trace but I suspect the problem is with Bell. If your router supports it, PPPoE works quite well. Al you need is your b1 username and password.

      Reply
      1. Nathan

        Hey, can you provide any further context on your last post re: lost packets? I just got an eero whole home mesh system and for some reason if I set it up in the advanced DMZ then I get unstable internet, even though I eliminate the double NAT and the eero gateway gets a public IP. When I take the eero back out of the DMZ, internet becomes stable again. It’s not a wifi issue it’s a packet issue I think. Any ideas, is this similar to what you describe?

        Reply
        1. Nigel Post author

          From my own testing, it seems that the issue is with Bell and the HH3000 specifically. Although you get a public IP when setup in the advanced DMZ configuration, packets are not being routed across the DMZ as expected. I would recommend PPPoE if your Eero supports it.

          Reply
          1. Nathan McKinlay

            Thanks for the reply – unfortunately no PPPoE available on the eero. It is the one missing feature on this $550 mesh system. Otherwise I’d opt for a media converter and go straight from fiber to RJ45 to the gateway and have it handle the connection. The rest of the system is pretty awesome (should be, at that price point). Thinking about switching out for a Nest wifi setup, which could handle PPPoE, but for now, surprisingly, running in double NAT hasn’t seem to posed any issues to devices or gaming.

  21. Rick

    If Bell uses its own hidden network for the Bell Fibe tv service, does that mean the home hub needs to be closer to the bell tv receiver for a better signal? Does this mean if I put the homehub in a basement server room I can expect poor bell fibe tv performance for my upstairs tv?

    Reply
    1. Nigel Post author

      My HH3000 is actually located in the basement under a set of stairs and the furthest TV in my house is on the top floor. They all works fine. No problem with the tv wifi. One of my Bell Fibe receivers is a 4k box that also serves as the DVR. I have that box connected to ethernet (although it can work wirelessly).

      Reply
  22. Vi

    Hi Nigel,

    Thank you for this great post. I have ordered TP-Link Deco X60, and they do offer PPPoE setup. I have Bell Fibe services including TV and home phone that I have never used. Wish I had seen this post before, since I was using my Deco M5 as AP. I was never able to use their advanced features, such as parental and security cotrolss. Hopefully this setup will allow this. My question to you is-did you connect your wired Bell 4K DVR directly the HH3000?, or to a switch? My whole house is wired and everything goes through a switch. Will I have issues if the DVR is connected through a switch when I use my mesh system in PPPoE mode?

    Reply
    1. Nigel Post author

      Yes, my 4k DVR is wired directly to the HH3000 via ethernet. However, that connection is on a separate VLAN to my home network (for security purposes). You should not have any real issues (except for broadcast traffic) if you put the DVR on your wired network but you should keep in mind that the HH3000 is a managed device that Bell has access to. Do you really want Bell on your home network? 😉

      Reply
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  24. Bill G

    I’m interested in Bell Fibre and I have a Ubiquity EdgeRouter X SFP. Will it be possible to use the SFP port on the router directly with the Bell connection? I’m not interested in TV services. Or, does Bell force you to have the Hub 3000?

    Reply
    1. Nigel Post author

      It’s technically possible but you will need to know the VLAN id for the Internet service. I read a post somewhere about someone that got it working without the HH3000. Not worth the effort IMO. Just use PPPoE, bridged, or double NAT.

      Reply

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